Sunday, 19 September 2010

Wayne Rooney, Orange Powerade

I first intended to blog about Wayne Rooney's Powerade endorsement in the lead-up to the World Cup. In reviewing a sportsman before or during a major event maximises topicality, but the main drawback is that opinion of the individual is in such flux that the blog can be dated pretty quickly. Conspirators of Pleasure is therefore grateful that Wayne was thoughtful enough to have some £1200-a-night dalliances so that the resulting tabloid revelations would provide topicality without such an immediate issue of shifting opinion.

Jokemakers have got to also be pleased about these transgressions. Historically most Rooney jokes have hinged on him being (a) stupid and/or (b) ugly. They can now add a third form of Rooney joke to the three, though they may also play on the previous two forms: Wayne is so stupid and so ugly, that he has to pay for sex.

In Nike's World Cup Mega-advert (directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, which rather explains the presence of Gael García Bernal), Rooney imagined that Ribery's interception of his ball would result in him living in a caravan park sporting a beard. Of course, neither player was ostracised in their respective countries for their actions at the World Cup, but rather their inactions, but that doesn't compare to the press treatment followng the hooker scandals the two have been embroiled in. I think it's this treatment which is more likely to lead Rooney to a beardy caravan existence (being pro-beard myself, the advert just serves as a reminder that Wayne doesn't have a beard, so I hope you can understand the resulting automatic points deduction).

Wayne's advert for Powerade sees a water-fuelled Rooney play against a Powerade-fuelled Rooney. For some reason the two Rooneys find it necessary to play shirts versus skins, even though there is only one player on each team (of course, this is Powerade's variation of the "Wayne Rooney's so stupid..." joke - I look forward to the sex-joke in the sequel). It doesn't make for a well-controlled experiment anyway, as it may be that it is wearing a top in those conditions that has a negative effect, rather than drinking water instead of Powerade. This is under the assumption that it is water, but for all we know it could be vodka, in which case it's fairly bleeding obvious that Powerade gives a better performance.

I like small print captions in adverts - it's basically a way of them saying, "Don't come crying to us when it doesn't work because we kind of admitted it might not work, even though we largely implied it would." The first caption reads, "Time lapse used to illustrate benefit during sustained exercise", which means (a) the time lapse has failed to illustrate this because they need a caption to point it out, and/or (b) they are worried that some people might expect Powerade to have a bullet-time side effect. "Prehydrating with Powerade before sports is scientifically proven to delay muscle fatigue and improve stamina in top athletes," we are told. From which we can infer that it may well do bugger all for mediocre athletes like me though? I suppose we can be thankful it can assist our top sports stars. Like Wayne Rooney. Who presumably does drink the official energy drink of the England team. Which is Lucozade.

I picked up the Orange Powerade because that was the one that had Rooney on the bottle. Drinking it I just felt like I had bought an overpriced bottle of diluted orange squash. I much prefer the blue and red flavours, even though their colour is a significant cause for concern. But, you ask, did it delay muscle fatigue and improve stamina for me as it would for Wayne? I wouldn't know, I can't really afford to splash out £1200 on a call girl.